


What You Are to Me (You Are)

by Enk



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:56:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enk/pseuds/Enk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Tony work together in the labs and create a lot of unresolved sexual tension</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Are to Me (You Are)

**Author's Note:**

> my first Avengers (2012) fic, be gentle?

To Tony, it had been a no-brainer inviting Bruce to stay at Sta-, no,  Avengers Tower.  Bruce wasn’t just brilliant; he was also not hard on the eyes at all. Tony didn’t mean to be attracted to Bruce, it just happened. Giant green rage monster aside, Bruce was the only person able to match Tony’s very impressive intellect. And speaking of green rage monsters, the other guy had after all caught him from an interstellar freefall and certain death. So, the three of them seemed to get along well enough. Super geniuses had to look out for each other.

Everything was great; even Pepper enjoyed Bruce’s company as much as she enjoyed that Tony had someone…  How did she put it? Someone else to play in his sandbox. She was right, and it felt liberating to speak _normal_  for a change and get more than a blank stare and a polite nod.

Things went swimmingly, until one day, Bruce reached for a-, for a-, Tony couldn’t remember what on Earth he could have possibly reached for but the entire action ended  with Bruce leaning much further into Tony’s personal space than required and Tony was fairly certain their hands had… touched.

Now, he wasn’t the kind of man to swoon over an innocent touch, but this was Bruce. The man had learned to control the Hulk inside him and not told a soul about it. Bruce played up the bumbling Math professor routine, but Tony knew better. Bruce knew exactly what he was doing at any point in time. There was no other way for him to be able to keep all that rage controlled inside. It couldn’t have been accidental.  He looked at Bruce who seemed to be completely immersed in his work again. His theory needed to be tested, through experiment. It was the only way he’d know and Tony had to know.

The next day, or really after a three-hour nap on a cot behind a container of plasma inductors, Tony began his experiment. Completely unlike his usual approach, he started slow. Pepper had taught him to enjoy the chase, to revel in the building anticipation; and most importantly of all, Pepper had given him the green light to chase under three conditions: use protection (a given, the last thing Tony wanted was a herd of baby Starks), men only (he could understand that), and she was to be given a detailed account of the encounter, preferably in video format (that one was a surprise and he liked it). So, he did what Tony did best, he went for it.

First, he placed himself closer to Bruce more often. He had a plan. Kinda. Sort of.  It mostly involved rearranging his work schedule so that they were both working on the same things more often. Bruce didn’t seem to notice. He appeared to simply be content to be working back in his element. No matter how close Tony sat, there was no repeat performance of the lean-and-touch.  Fair enough, he was going to have to step things up a bit.

“Hey, are you done with the solder?” Before Bruce could answer, Tony leaned over his shoulder and reached for it. Pause. Linger. Move Back. That was the plan. He did have a plan, hah! He didn’t expect Bruce to put his hand on Tony’s to stop him from taking the solder. Nor did he expect the touch to go straight to his dick.

“What if I’m not?” Bruce looked at him and Tony’s mouth went dry.

“But I need it?” He said and mentally slapped himself when his voice broke on the last syllable.

Bruce looked at him, eyes darker than usual, dark with something. Tony briefly felt himself gaping. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this thoroughly studied in less than 30 seconds. Then Bruce smiled that damned handsome smile of his and placed the solder in Tony’s hand and closed his fingers around it in an oddly intimate gesture for handing over a simple coil of solder. They were stupidly close, so close if Tony had half a mind, he would have leaned the few inches between their faces and just kissed Bruce. He didn’t, but the moment didn’t pass either.

“You’re right,” Bruce was still looking him in the eye, “I do think you need it.” He smiled and turned back to his work. That had been when the moment ended and Tony shuffled to the other side of the lab with no idea what the hell he had needed solder for in the first place. Also, maybe he was trying to will down a growing erection, maybe.

The rest of the day came and went without much interaction between the two. Bruce appeared to be completely absorbed by his work and Tony spent the rest of the day trying to resist the urge to slip into the bathroom and take care of himself.  This wasn’t going quite as he had planned.  Tony was restless. It was hard to get to sleep. Pepper was in Washington for a week and the half hour phone call before her bedtime wasn’t enough. He masturbated, picturing nothing really. It was more of an act of necessity, which usually wasn’t his style but what the hell, he was tired, he was hard. It worked and eventually, he fell asleep while wondering if Bruce was still awake, working away just a few floors below him.

Morning came quickly, but Tony was awake before his alarm already brushing his teeth. He would have been thinking about the things he would experiment on Bruce with, had it not been for a sudden emergency call from the labs. Something had gone terribly wrong over night and one of their research experiments had self-incinerated. Contingency clean-up took precedent. It always took precedent. So, time for lunch and dinner passed and while freeze-dried fruit made for an excellent snack, it didn’t really provide any sort of fuel.

“I’m hungry.” Tony stated when his stomach’s growl swelled to an un-ignorable frequency. “Are you hungry? I’m famished. Let’s go get something to eat.” He touched the small of Bruce’s back and there was a pause before Bruce replied.

“I could probably go for that, yeah.” He smiled and turned off the Bunsen burner he’d been in front of for the past hour.

“What do you want? Italian? Chinese? Shawarma? There’s a lovely Thai place not too far from here. Of course, there’s classic American cuisine at every corner. They all deliver.”

“That’s a lot of choice.” Bruce almost looked uncomfortable

Of course it was. The man had been living in the poorest parts of the world and now must be overwhelmed with what he had access to once more. Tony was about to make a decision for them, when Bruce got up and leaned against the table beside him. So close they were touching. Smiling. Was he wearing L’eau d’Issey*?

“Why don’t you surprise me?” He placed his hand on Tony’s shoulder, a completely innocent move until his thumb brushed the back of his neck.  Tony really, really wanted to turn around, shove Bruce against the wall and- his stomach growled so loudly he could practically hear Bruce raise an eyebrow. In the end, the food was Thai and Bruce and Tony ate in the comfortable silence all really hungry people ate in.

The next few days were a blur of ‘accidental’ touching; brushing up against each other and Tony was convinced that it was definitely reciprocated action.  The only problem was that productivity had an inverse linear relationship with the attention the two suddenly paid to each other. Apparently Tony had started a cascade reaction of calculated accidental touches that had escalated into unresolved sexual tension that could be cut with a knife. Almost literally as Tony nearly severed his finger with a laser scalpel, because he was distracted by the small patch of stomach that Bruce revealed when he stretched and reached for his coffee.  He needed to talk to Bruce.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Yeah,” Bruce puts down the thermal coupler, “everything okay?”

“I-,” Tony started but how was he supposed to finished. ‘Hi, just letting you know that you’re too handsome to work in the lab with me. For safety reasons.’? ‘Sorry, Bruce but I am too attracted to you to keep working’? ‘Hi, you’re hot, I’m hot. We should make out.’?

“This isn’t working out.” Okay, opposite of what Tony wanted to say but he could work with that. Though next time, he’d require his mouth to check with his brain before saying anything else stupid.

“I- I’m sorry?” Bruce actually looked like he’d been struck for a moment. Before Tony could reply, he had just as quickly composed himself again. He smiled and Tony felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “It’s fine. I get it. You’ve been more than kind to let me stay this long.” He went to pack his tools while Tony was still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

“That’s not-,“ he managed to get across the room and took the tools from Bruce’s hands, “that’s not what I was trying to say.”

“I know,” Bruce’s smile was too sad to be convincing, “you’ve been avoiding me for a couple of days now. It’s okay, really.  I should have started looking for my place of my own a long time ago.”

“How did you even get that from what I said?” Again, it was not what he meant. He wanted to say something along the line of: ‘I promise you, Bruce, you are welcome here as long as you would like to be welcome. I care for you, I really do.’ He didn’t say it because Bruce looked at him like someone had kicked his fucking puppy.

“Oh what the hell,” Tony said and pulled Bruce into a kiss, slow and gentle. He didn’t want to scare him off, just wanted him close. Close was what Bruce seemed to want because he leaned into Tony, hands gripping at his arms so hard, for a moment Tony worried about ending up making out with the other guy.  Which while awkward, kind of exciting, they definitely were not at that stage of their relations- encounter, their encounter. 

Kissing Bruce was amazing. Tony wasn’t sure what he’d expected, maybe relaxed, slow, nonchalant, but he definitely hadn’t expected the intensity with which Bruce pulled him closer, deepened the kiss, and put his hand on the back of Tony’s neck. It was so good; Tony would have been okay if it never ended.

“So, this is what you’ve been trying to tell me.” Bruce only pulled away far enough to talk.

“You started it.” Tony smiled and kissed him again, sliding his hands over Bruce’s ass, “all handsome in my labs with that brilliant mind of yours, amazing ass in those pants.”

Bruce actually snorted, but a smile stayed on his face.  Before Tony could say anything else, Bruce pushed him against the table and ground his hips against him. He was hard, god yes, and so was Tony, had been half-hard in his trousers since Bruce had leaned against him. Tony pulled him closer. He needed to keep kissing Bruce because it was really only the best thing ever.

“Tony…” Bruce was a little out of breath and suddenly, Tony wondered if this would make him- “No no no, it’s fine.” He smiled and nipped at Tony’s lip. Feisty.  “I _can_ handle pointy things.”

“I’ve got a pointy thing for you.” Tony smiled, a little unsteady because Bruce decided to rock his hips against him.

“Really?” Bruce looked amused. “That’s what you’re leading with?”

“That’s what I’m leading with.”

“Considering your current state, I’d say you aren’t leading much of anything, really.”

“I could change that.”

“Could you?” Bruce canted his hips again and -oh god yes- ground their erections together just at the right angle. Tony couldn’t help the noise he made; nor could he have stopped his fingers from opening their trousers, tearing at their shirts. He didn’t care they were still in the middle of the lab, and that work day would start soon enough, or that he had just ripped the buttons off a 200-dollar shirt. Usually, the thrill of potentially being caught would have excited him more, but now that he finally could feel the heat of Bruce’s dick in his hand; he found that he didn’t care much about anything else.

“Maybe,” he managed to grind out but really, ‘no’ would have been more accurate because, god, he loved the feeling of Bruce’s weight on him. The man looked slight but leaning against Tony, he felt heavy, hot, and amazing. He bucked his hips up against Bruce, trying to urge him on; and Bruce, bless him, did exactly that, took them both in hand to slick them up with pre-come and sweat before gripping Tony’s hips to grind their dicks together. Fuck, it was good. Tony’s head fell back and only faintly did he register that all those wanton moans and gasps came from his own lips.

“Tony,” Bruce brought a hand to Tony’s cheek, “look at me.”

It was the kinkiest thing Tony had ever encountered, and he’d done some crazy things. He looked into Bruce’s eyes, dark with lust. God, he was getting close and Bruce kept moving so perfectly in synch with him. Tony gripped his arm, still looking at him, noticing the sweat bead on his upper lip. And suddenly, Tony came, unable to stop the moans, and unable to look away as he felt his hot come paint streaks on both their abdomens.

“Shit Tony,” Bruce nearly whimpered, “so fucking hot.”

When Bruce came, it was silent, gripping Tony’s hip tight and never once breaking eye contact. If Tony had been hot, Bruce was scalding in all the good ways.  They didn’t move for a long few moments. Between them only the heat of their bodies and the soft pants that echoed through the room.  Then, Tony, suddenly inspired, dragged two fingers through the cooling semen on his stomach and licked it off his fingers. The kiss that followed nearly split his lip when Bruce claimed his mouth. It was likely that there would have been a round two, if Jarvis hadn’t announced activity in the elevator.  So, they pulled apart from each other, quickly adjusting their clothes, which was laughable as neither of them had more than four buttons left on their respective shirt.

“Don’t worry, boys, it’s just me.” Pepper smiled as she walked past them with an armful of binders. “I just stopped by to drop these off for you, Tony.”  She placed the folders beside Tony and gently touched his shoulder. She kissed him tender and sweet and from the corner of his eyes, Tony could see Bruce freeze with realization. Pepper just smiled and leaned to kiss Bruce’s cheek. “Tony didn’t tell you, did he?”

“I, uh, was going to?” Tony scratched his neck. “But then you burst in, unannounced, mind you. So, really, this is all your fault, which means you should be the one doing explaining of agreementsbb…” He trailed off.

“I’ll leave that in your capable hands.” She winked at him, stole his (albeit cold) coffee, and disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared.

“So… agreement, huh?” Bruce was still calm, but something in his eyes looked… off.

“I can- I can sleep with men. Other men. Well you, yes, but men in general are allowed as long as I tell Pepper in detail what happened. Or provide her with, uh, evidence? It’s… a thing that works. Hard to explain, but trust me, no harm done. She’s perfectly fine with this.”

“Okay.” Bruce looked at him. Still calm. Shouldn’t he be getting at least annoyed? “So, I’m going to take a shower. And if you think you want to have something else to tell Pepper about, you’re welcome to join me. If not, no hard feelings.”

Bruce left Tony standing in his lab and went to take a shower.

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> *L’eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake is a high-end men's scent which is according to Sephora "A fresh herbaceous scent with warm, woody undertones"


End file.
